Firm Handshakes Help Land Jobs

by Live Science Staff | May 06, 2008 08:00pm ET

If you're seeking employment, get a grip. A firm handshake is key to landing a job.

In a new study, scientists put 98 students through mock job
interviews with businesspeople. The students also met with trained
handshake raters who, unbeknownst to the students, rated their grips.
Separately, the businesspeople graded each student's overall
performance and hireability. The two group's scores were then compared.

"We've always heard that interviewers make up their mind about a
person in the first two or three minutes of an interview, no matter how
long the interview lasts," said study leader Greg Stewart, associate
professor of management and organizations at the University of Iowa.
"We found that the first impression begins with a handshake that sets
the tone for the rest of the interview."

The study will be detailed in September in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

"Job seekers are trained how to act in a job interview, how to talk,
how to dress, how to answer questions, so we all look and act alike to
varying degrees because we've all been told the same things," he said.
"But the handshake is something that's perhaps more individual and
subtle, so it may communicate something that dress or physical
appearance doesn't."

Stewart also found those with strong handshakes scored better with
the interviewers in part because they also exhibited greater ease with
small talk, eye contact and other social skills.

"We probably don't consciously remember a person's handshake or
whether it was good or bad," Stewart said. "But the handshake is one of
the first nonverbal clues we get about the person's overall
personality, and that impression is what we remember."

This may work against women,
however, because their grips tend to be not as strong. But other
research finds women tend to be stronger in other nonverbal
communication skills that seemed to offset their less brawny grips,
Steward said.

And in the study, women who did have a strong handshake seemed to have an advantage over men.

"Those women seemed to be more memorable than men who had an equally
strong handshake," Steward said. "A really good handshake made a bigger
impact on the outcome of the interview for the women than it did for
the men."

Liberal leaning

A similar study in the year 2000 found that people with a firm
handshake were more extraverted and open to experience and less
neurotic and shy than those with wimpy grips. That study, which
involved students, handshake coders and surveys (but no
businesspeople), was reported in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

It found that women who are more liberal, intellectual and open to
new experiences had a firmer handshake and made a more favorable
impression than women who were less open and had a less firm handshake.

For men, the opposite was revealed: More open men had a slightly
less firm handshake and made a somewhat poorer impression than less
open men.

Live Science Staff

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